Hands on with Twitter Periscope, the app gunning for Meerkat

Twitter live video broadcasting is a squall inside an ocean of social media activity, and bobbing frantically in the middle of it like a shiny buoy is Meerkat, the little video-streaming app that could. Social media users are flocking to its bright beacon. It is the app and the social activity of the moment.

But slicing through the waves and headed right toward it is Periscope. It, too, is a live video streaming app. Like Meerkat, it's connected to Twitter. However that connection is deeper because, for all intents and purposes, Twitter is the submarine just below the surface the ocean that Periscope is connected to.

It’s likely that, if Meerkat had not exploded the way it did, Twitter might have kept its Periscope app (free in the App Store starting Thursday) below the surface for a while longer, but now any delay could spell disaster for Twitter’s live video streaming plans. Meerkat’s undeniable popularity and reportedly explosive growth had to be cause for concern in the halls of Twitter. The micro-blogging social media giant bought Periscope just weeks ago, mere days before Meerkat went from unknown to the app everyone from Jimmy Fallon to Gary Vaynerchuk to Al Roker is using.

Getting to know Periscope

The personal broadcasting app Periscope makes setup easy (left). You just have to let it use your camera, mic and, if you choose, location. On the right is the home screen with available live broadcasts and archived ones below.

Image: Periscope

Periscope performs virtually the same function as Meerkat. It’s a platform for streaming live video from your iPhone from virtually anywhere in the world — where there’s connectivity. It tracks viewers, comments and even adds the ability to “heart” video streams you like (or love).

Twitter gave me early access the new app, but didn’t turn on full Twitter integration — I could sign in with my Twitter account, but that was it — so the experience felt a bit limited.

Here’s what I can tell you, though:

Periscope is a smartly designed and easy to use. It employs swipes and gestures for navigation and features, which in combination with the design, makes the app feel more polished than Meerkat.

Periscope tries to guide you on who to follow (left). In the early days, there were more archived broadcasts than live ones (right).

Image: Periscope

Setup is simple. After installation, Periscope offers a brief walkthrough of its features and then guides you to follow a lengthy, prepopulated lists of early adopters. It’s actually two lists. The top list offers “Featured” Periscope users, including magician David Blaine, Shonda Rhimes, John Hodgeman, and Periscope engineers. The lower list are all the people you follow who are currently on Periscope. The entire list is checked, so if you accept you follow all of them on Periscope. You can deselect the entire list and pick and choose who you want to follow.

This approach is notable because, in the early going, Meerkat auto-followed everyone you followed on Twitter — a Twitter no-no. Twitter broke that part of Meerkat’s Twitter API connection and, in Periscope, is clearly showing how it thinks things should work.

The next step is the Watch screen. Like Meerkat, Periscope lists the current live broadcast with large, full-width images, but Periscope clearly has better designers. The images, screencaps from the start of the live videos, are slightly longer than Meerkat’s, which provides room for white, knock-out text, a big “Live” or “Offline” label, a broadcaster name and avatar and the number of people watching.

During a live stream, you can comment and the broadcaster will see the comments. Because so few people were watching each stream, people often responded directly to me on camera. In Meerkat, every comment is a Twitter reply to the original Meerkat Live video prompt tweet. Here, however, Periscope fundamentally differs from Meerkat.

Periscope will not be pulling in live Twitter responses during your Periscope broadcast. Instead, all those comments are Periscope-only. On the other hand, those who follow the Periscope link on the original Tweet will be able to watch and engage with the live video in the app (if they have it on their iOS device) or in a pop-up screen (Desktop and Android) where they'll still see comments and hearts, but not be able to add any of their own.

Three live Periscope broadcasts. One the left, a live surgery from Sanjay Gupta. Center was a Celebrity Survivor event and far right was a man and his cool cat.

Image: Periscope

At any time, during anyone’s broadcast, I could select the people icon to see all the live viewers — none of which can watch anonymously (within the Periscope app) — and, if location is on, where the Periscope is originating from. It’s also where you can choose to share out the broadcast to all your followers or just specific people.

Periscope lacks Meerkat’s gamifaction element. Instead you get the ability to accumulate “Likes” or Hearts for each video. Viewers give you hearts by tapping the screen while they watch the video stream — more taps means more hearts for the broadcaster. You can also see hearts from other people. They all appear in the lower left corner of the video screen and then float up and fade away.

There is no leaderboard in Periscope. Instead there’s a list of people you follow. In there you can see how many Periscope followers each person has accumulated. You can also view your own stats and your total number of hearts or likes. My competitive nature prefers Meerkat’s leaderboard.

The closest Periscope comes to a leaderboard is under the People icon, which shows you People you’re already following on Twitter that you can add and below that "Most Loved," which is organized based on who has the most hearts. When I checked, a singer named Lidia Schillaci topped the list with 13,054 hearts.

Because the service is limited to a relative few invited beta testers, there were often times when no one was broadcasting. That’s okay, though, because there’s still lots of Periscope programming to watch.

Periscope auto-saves every broadcast and, as soon as you’re done, uploads the whole thing to Periscope so people can watch streams from people they follow even if they’re not live. I like this feature, but the fact that Periscope has to upload that video file does make me wonder how it’ll impact data usage (not in a good way, certainly). Twitter compares Periscope's data usage to that of Apple's FaceTime video chat app.

Meerkat, by contrast, offers no off-line viewing options for followers, but does, like Periscope, lets you save Meerkats to your phone.

You can, by the way, like (or heart) saved videos and see the hearts that were awarded throughout the video when it streamed live.

I do wish Periscope’s replay viewer let you scrub back and forth through the video. Pause is nice, but I don’t want to have to rewatch a whole stream just to get back to my favorite part.

Up Periscope

Shooting your own Periscope video is easy. You select the camera icon and are presented with a message “What are you seeing now?” which may remind some of Twitter’s “What’s happening?” prompt that still appears in the mobile app. This is the spot where you title your stream and/or explain what people are about to see.

Below that you have the option of geolocating your video, streaming to Twitter (which was not activated for my tests) and, unique to Periscope, creating a private broadcast to a select set of users. If you choose that option, you simply select who you want to invite to the broadcast and then start broadcasting. It could be useful for teachers who want to remotely teach a class on, say, drawing or cooking.

To end a Periscope broadcast, you pull down on the screen to reveal the stop button (and some information about frame rate, which may only exist in the beta). On the right you see Periscope auto-uploading your final broadcast video, as well as stats like

Image: Periscope.

Public and private broadcasts start and function the same way. You have a big red “Start Broadcast” function. There is no scheduling function, like you’d find in Meerkat. Though, to be fair, that Meerkat option is poorly executed. Meerkat’s scheduler is really just a tweet reminding people that you will start streaming at a predetermined time. Periscope is lacking one more important option: the ability to stream in landscape mode. Yes, you can turn the camera, but your controls and real-time viewer stats will not turn with you.

During the broadcast, you can double-tap the screen to switch from the default back camera to the front. I wish this control were visible on screen as it is in Meerkat. Once you’ve started your stream, you’ll see a live count of current viewers — though mine didn’t always sync up with the final tally I saw after the stream. You’ll also see comments float up from the base of the screen. Comments are color-coded, but with no rhyme or reason, and appear with each commenter’s handle. Also floating in among the comments are updates about new viewers and notifications of viewers inviting other people to follow the stream.

Watch me

When it's time to broadcast, you see the screen on the left. On the right, you see what the broadcaster's screen can look like. You can keep message on the screen or hide them. You can't hide messages on Meerkat.

Image: Periscope

If you allow Periscope notifications, you’ll get push notifications inviting you to watch various live streams. These do not come from the person who launched the stream. Instead, you get an invite when someone you follow invites you to come watch someone else’s live stream. These notifications even pop up when you’re watching other streams. I guess this is to encourage discovery, but the volume of invites and notifications started to get annoying.

But here’s what's great about Periscope (and to be fair, Meerkat). I love dropping in and out of live stories as they are happening. I watched a live pet fish burial at sea, Mark Cuban in a live radio interview and taking Periscope questions, played a game with a VC (against other viewers), had Twitter employees sing for me and traveled the world (usually in someone else’s’ car who was Periscoping while driving — don’t do this). The ability to watch previous streams is a key differentiator, but Periscope should add some sort of tagging ability to help organize the, for now, chronological list.

I broadcast my commute through New York City and me drawing a picture. While I enjoyed watching people comment and like my stream, the engagement was nowhere near Meerkat levels. Which meant I didn’t get the same dopamine rush. I suspect this will change as soon as Twitter turns on the Twitter integration, which at least means I can broadcast direct to my Twitter followers. Twitter has no immediate plans to let you embed Periscope broadcasts, but if they do it could be a game changer. And even though Twitter is already testing autoplay videos, it will not launch Periscope with the ability to broadcast in the Twitter stream.

I'm kind of surprised that Twitter isn't taking integration further. The lack of it is what could keep Meerkat humming along nicely, even in the face of what's sure to be formidable competition from the more polished Periscope.

BONUS: What is Meerkat? Founder explains most-discussed app of SXSW

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